Truthout: 2 April 2012

Henry A. Giroux | Hoodie Politics: Trayvon Martin and Racist Violence in Post-Racial America
Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: "The killing of a young African-American boy, Trayvon Martin, by an overzealous white Hispanic security guard ... has devolved into a spectacle. While there is plenty of moral outrage to go around, a recognition that racism is alive and well in America, and that justice has been hijacked by those who can afford it, the broader and more fundamental questions and analyses are not being raised."
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Organizer: New York City Fare Strike Continues Trend of Militant Self-Organization
J.A. Myerson, Truthout: "During Wednesday morning rush hour, signs hung in at least eight New York subway stations, inviting straphangers to ride for free. In Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, service gates were chained open and turnstiles taped up 'in a coordinated response ... to escalating service cuts, fare hikes, racist policing, assaults on transit workers' working conditions and livelihoods - and the profiteering of the super-rich by way of a system they've rigged in their favor.'"
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Justices Approve Strip-Searches for Any Offense
Adam Liptak, The New York Times News Service: "About 13 million people are admitted each year to the nation's jails, Justice Kennedy wrote. Under Monday's ruling, he wrote, 'every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed.' Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the four dissenters, said strip-searches were 'a serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy' and should be used only when there was good reason to do so."
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Romney's Top Five Assaults on Women's Health
Annie-Rose Strasser, ThinkProgress: "Of women under 50 years old, only 30 percent support Romney, while over 60 percent back the President.... Romney's record on women's health is hardly strong, and women voters, especially the young voters who tend to be pro-choice and pro-contraception, are likely responding to Romney's affront on these issues. But it hasn't always been this way.... Romney has moved significantly to the right on almost all women's health issues."
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Chris Hedges | Someone You Love: Coming to a Gulag Near You
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "The security and surveillance state does not deal in nuance or ambiguity. Its millions of agents, intelligence gatherers, spies, clandestine operatives, analysts and armed paramilitary units live in a binary world of opposites ... You either embrace the crusade to physically eradicate evildoers from the face of the Earth or you are an Islamic terrorist, a collaborator or an unwitting tool of terrorists. And now that we have created this monster it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to free ourselves from it."
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From Prisoner to Parliament in Myanmar
Thomas Fuller, The New York Times News Service: "Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy advocate silenced for two decades by Myanmar's generals with house arrests and overturned elections, assumed a new role in her country's political transition on Sunday, apparently winning a seat in Parliament to make the remarkable shift from dissident to lawmaker."
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Ellen Brown | Oh Canada! Imposing Austerity on the World's Most Resource-Rich Country
Ellen Brown, The Web of Debt Blog: "Even the world's most resource-rich country has now been caught in the debt trap. Its once-proud government programs are being subjected to radical budget cuts - cuts that could have been avoided if the government had not quit borrowing from its own central bank in the 1970s."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Homemade Explosive Device Detonates Outside a Wisconsin Planned Parenthood, and More
In today's On the News segment: Calls increase for Rick Santorum to drop out of primary race, homemade explosive device detonates outside Wisconsin town's Planned Parenthood, Occupy the Department of Education begins four days of rallies, and more.
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"Yes" to Tar Sands, "No" to Coal: Obama Confounds Climate Community
Elizabeth McGowan, InsideClimate News: "How, puzzled critics asked, could the Obama administration endorse a tar sands pipeline project that's been labeled the 'fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet' while simultaneously laying the groundwork for kicking coal to the curb as an electricity generator? The short answer is that he has one eye on the polls and the other on his long-term energy goals."
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Dean Baker | The Supreme Scream: Health Care After the Court Ruling
Dean Baker, Truthout: "Perhaps a defeat in the Supreme Court will lead to a newly energized public that will demand that their representatives in Congress ... give us universal Medicare. That would be great, but it is difficult to see it happening.... If we aren't going to win by going through the front door, we will have to go around the back door. That means undermining the base of power of the health care industry by taking away their money."
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A New Energy Third World in North America?
Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch: "Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet's twenty-first-century 'new Saudi Arabia' for 'tough energy' - deep-sea oil, Canadian tar sands, and fracked oil and natural gas But here's a question no one considers: Will the oil curse become as familiar on this continent in the wake of a new American energy rush as it is in Africa and elsewhere?"
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The Pledge of Resistance Could Change the Game Against a War With Iran
Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy: "If people were convinced that there were a 90% chance of war in the next three months ... many people would be in the streets.... By inaction on the threat of war with Iran, people are effectively saying: 'so we're on a slow path? Give me a call when we're on a fast path. I have other demands on my time.' The problem with this is that by the time we are on a fast path to war, our political leverage to stop the war will be very small - much smaller than it is today."
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"The World Wonders" Why SEC Missed Deadline on Choosing Between Protecting US Investors or Foreign Corporate Wrongdoers
Jeffrey McCord, Truthout: "More than two months have passed since the SEC's January 21 deadline established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Sec. 929Y.) to recommend whether or not Congress should overturn the Morrison Supreme Court decision by restoring US investors' right to hold accountable in US courts foreign companies that mislead or defraud them on US soil.... Why should Sony be treated differently from Apple? Why should BP be freed from US investor accountability when Exxon isn't?"
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Justice Scalia Echoes Republican Political Rhetoric During the Affordable Care Act Argument (Video)
Jeff Spross, Ian Millhiser, ThinkProgress: "We will not know until June whether the Supreme Court will strike down the Affordable Care Act or decide instead to follow the Constitution. One thing that was completely clear from this week's oral argument, however, is that one member of the Supreme Court is far more concerned with reciting political talking points than he is with actually upholding the law."
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In Lille, the Left Front "Has Broken Its Banks"
L'Humanite Staff, l'Humanite: "After the retaking of the Bastille on 18 March by a mass of 120,000 people, the Left Front struck another blow on Tuesday evening. Some 23,000 people attended presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon's meeting in Lille. 15,000 inside the packed-out Grand Palace, and 8,000 outside. 'The river has broken its banks and no matter what happens, the flood isn't going to recede any time soon,' announced the Left Front candidate to a sea of red flags chanting 'Resistance! Resistance!'"
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

Scalia Believes Innocent People Can Be Executed, So He's Not Going to Care About People Dying From Not Having Health Insurance
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "Scalia appears to be the major enforcer of political allegiance to the Federalist Society and the Koch brothers. The man is so dangerously ideological that he even declared, in a dissenting opinion, that there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent an innocent person from being executed.... Remember the Citizens United decision? Remember anointing a president in 2000 despite strong indications that he was actually the loser? If you have health insurance now, hold on to it for dear life."
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Paul Krugman: Pink Slime Economics
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President Obama Meets With Harper and Calderon at the White House Today
Read the Article at Bloomberg

Siding With Governor Walker in Union Fight Could Cost Romney in November
Read the Article at The Hill

Five Preposterous but Persistent Conservative Myths
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Florida Serves as Proving Ground for Pro-Gun Laws
Read the Article at The Tampa Bay Times

Can College Be Saved?
Read the Article at Salon

Google, Amazon and Microsoft Swarm China for Network Gear
Read the Article at Wired

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